origin uncertain. This word is first recorded in the early 18th cent. (although the device certainly existed earlier), in the forms condum, condon, cundum. It has long been popularly supposed to have owed its name to a Dr or Colonel Condom, its alleged inventor, but he almost certainly did not exist. Various other origins have been proposed (e.g. from the town of Condom in France, from Latin quondam ‘formerly, on occasion’, or from medieval Latin condoma ‘house, dome’), but none is generally accepted